User blog:Mr.Robbo/Infinite Histories Clean Up
Before I start, I should probably apologise for not being very active recently, especially in Infinite Histories. Much of my spare time recently has been occupied by the horrendously boring task of learning to drive. However, I'm hoping to be able to devote more of my time to the wiki again. Uncanonical, Abandoned and Stub Pages While browsing the wiki, it struck me how many pages there are that have been created and then left and forgotten about (many of which are actually mine - whoops); I don't really have any problem with this because I think it's great that people are coming up with so many ideas, whether they're successful or not, but I do get the feeling that they're cluttering up the wiki quite a lot. Though this isn't a very scientific test, I tried clicking the 'Random Page' button (possibly my favourite link on the whole wiki) three times to see what it came up with. Two of the pages hadn't been edited in the last six months; the same two pages had less than 100 words; one of them didn't even appear to be part of any particular universe or continuity. It kind of makes the wiki seem incomplete or inactive. Or dead. I don't think that's the case. I think a cleanup of Infinite Histories is in order, in which most of the Uncanonical/Abandoned/Stub pages are deleted. I don't know if we have an archiving system in Infinite Histories like the one on GC, but I think it would be a good idea in case there are any UAS pages that people intend to come back to in the future. I know this cleanup would lower, perhaps even drastically lower, the wiki's page count, but I'd rather the wiki have a few active, high-quality pages than many abandoned, low-quality pages. Infinite Histories Canon On the other side of the coin, there are some universes which see a lot of activity, and have pretty detailed and well thought out pages. Romanum is probably the best example, and hopefully Atra Mors will be of the same caliber; universes like these are at the heart of the wiki and make up what I like to think of as the 'Infinite Histories canon' of major universes. Hopefully these universes will continue to grow. Do we have any sort of Contents Page for Infinite Histories? I think a page with a list of major universes and a list of minor universes would be very useful, and would help in keeping track of what projects are taking place around the wiki. Categories I've said a lot about the Divergent/Embellished/Fantastical, Individual/Tandem/Public and Open/Restricted/Closed categorization systems in the past. These were meant to help to give the wiki structure and direction. However, as Infinite Histories has become established I think these systems are becoming unnecessary in the wiki. When people are making universes, they know what they're doing and they know what they want out of them; there's no need for such categories to advertise that fact. I therefore intend to begin to deconstruct these categorization systems and remove the categories from the pages; categorisation is good, but cluttering up the bottoms of pages with a confusing array of incidental categories kind of defeats the object. Summary Starting next week (Sunday 22nd) I intend to remove the above mentioned categorisation systems from the wiki and create a contents page of all of the universes in Infinite Histories. I will review my own projects that have accumulated over the years and delete any that I don't intend to work on (most of them), then put the remaining ones on the contents page; it would be appreciated if everyone else did the same. The reason I'm waiting a week before these changes is so that I can get people's feedback on whether this would be a good idea. Hopefully I will revitalise the wiki somewhat and refocus people around the projects with the most potential. Category:Blog posts Category:Admin blogs